


valentine's day

by damagederudite



Category: Divergent - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Original Character(s), Valentine's Day, this is basically just jeanine's failing love life ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29438523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damagederudite/pseuds/damagederudite
Summary: Jeanine can make it through this Valentine’s Day and all the days to come. So what if people look at her weirdly? So what if that kind old lady sets her up with another man that she has to explain that there has been a big misunderstanding to? It doesn’t matter, she’ll be fine. It’s only one day.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	valentine's day

**Author's Note:**

> This goes out to all my fellow singles this Valentine's day!

Jeanine has always hated Valentine’s Day. That’s no secret. She used to shout at Andrew whenever he would bring it up and practically vomit when she would watch Kevin and Carrie exchange gifts. The sweet flowers and fake words printed onto cards. It’a all a scam and all completely and utterly illogical. 

What is the point of it? Nothing other than for card companies to make a ridiculously high amount of profits and for single people, like her, to feel bad. For Jeanine, it’s never been the day itself that makes her feel bad as much as the looks of sympathy from others. She just wants to scream ‘I couldn’t care less that I'm single! Shove your romance up where the sun doesn’t shine and then shit it back out again! See if I care!’ but she can’t do that. 

Instead, every single year, she has to take the sympathetic looks and somehow make the people in relationships feel better. How does that work? How does that even make any sense? They feel bad because she isn’t in a relationship and they are. Well that seems like her business and they should keep out of it. 

Every single year. 

She celebrated the day once, with a girl named Kai. In case it isn’t obvious: they didn’t stay together. It lasted about a year and a half and they were happy enough. But ultimately Jeanine is married to her work and the girl that never liked her back in school - Evelyn Johnson. She is Evelyn Johnson-Eaton now and she is probably off having a great time with Marcus. Well, as great of a time as you can have in Abnegation. 

Evelyn never liked her back or maybe she did. Jeanine will never know because she was never brave enough to say anything. She has a crippling fear of rejection that stops her from pursuing most things in life. Relationships never seem to go any further than a one night stand or, if she is lucky, a casual fling. ‘Just come by my place whenever you are horny’, that’s the kind of thing that Jeanine does. 

She doesn’t hate it. In fact, she finds it quite beneficial given how busy she is with work after Norton’s passing not too long ago. Sometimes she just wishes that it could go further. Sometimes she longs for someone to hold, or to hold her, in the cold winter nights. 

Jeanine would never admit it, she can barely even admit it to herself, but she longs for human touch. She longs for the touch of another woman that is something other than sexual or helping her stand up after she falls over in front of her whole faction - that happens far more often than Jeanine cares to admit. 

Maybe she also craves attention. Sure her job awards her with the attention of the whole city, but they don’t give her attention as a person. It seems like no one truly knows her. The only person that even comes close to that is Erin, her assistant. Even then, Jeanine’s secretive and detached nature makes her hard to get to know and Erin actually knows very little. 

Sometimes her and Erin go out drinking on Valentine’s Day to drown their sorrows together. Not this year though, for Erin has a boyfriend this year. He’s a sweet man but Jeanine can’t help but feel a certain amount of resentment towards him, especially on this day. She should be happy for her friend and that’s what she tries to be. 

People constantly try to convince Jeanine that next year will be better. Next year she will have someone to share the day with that makes her enjoy the holiday just as much as the rest of her colleagues do. Jeanine finds that highly unlikely. She had someone one year. One year will just have to be enough.

Jeanine feels very little towards Kai now and she feels absolutely nothing negative. They ended amicably. If anyone has the right to be annoyed, it would be Kai. She deserved better than Jeanine. She is with someone now - another woman that Jeanine hopes treats her right, because she deserves it. Kai deserves to be happy after putting up with Jeanine for a year and a half. That’s a year and a half longer than anyone else ever has. 

Kai was someone that never failed to make Jeanine happy and sometimes Jeanine lays awake at night wondering why she gave her up. Why did she sit her down and talk to her about why they wouldn’t work? Was it because Jeanine wanted the best for her or was it because she just couldn’t let herself be happy? It’s highly likely that it was the latter but Jeanine will choose to believe that it was the former. She did what was for the best. 

There is a woman that Jeanine works with. She is much older than her, sixty years old, and she has been with her husband for just over forty years. It’s beautiful when you think about it, especially since he surprises her with flowers at work every year. She always promises that Jeanine will find someone someday and is constantly setting her up on dates. That would be sweet if, no matter how many times everyone tries to tell her, she didn’t keep making the mistake of thinking that Jeanine likes men. Obviously those dates never work out. 

Some people in Jeanine’s situation would say that they are cursed but Jeanine does not view it like that. No, at most times, she is fully content with being single. She gets to pursue her career aspirations and doesn’t have to apologise to anyone for it, especially since her only friend is her assistant. It’s just those rare hours of the night, where everything is still and silent outside the part from the faint sounds of the wind, that she begins to long for someone beside her. 

She doesn’t long for someone on Valentine’s Day, she just longs for everyone to shut up. 

She has the same problems with the newspapers when they comment on her love life. It doesn’t matter to her but she wishes that they would shut up. She is fine, she is not insecure about it at all. She just wishes that people would leave her the hell alone. 

She doesn’t need anything but the small, metal contraption that she keeps in her bottom drawer. She is perfectly content in her relationship with a machine. Everyone thinks that she is a machine anyway so she may as well be with one. 

Of course, as previously mentioned, there are also the women that she meets out. That she sleeps with one or two times before they never see each other again. Or sometimes they do. Sometimes they get assigned onto one of her teams and they reconcile in a closet somewhere. Either way, it never matters because it never means anything. 

Nothing ever seems to matter in Jeanine’s life and she never seems to matter to anyone else. All they care about is her incredible abilities when it comes to academics, her ridiculously high IQ score and the fact that she can be terrifying. Scaring people makes them work harder for the most part. Jeanine doesn’t coddle anyone, she refuses to. 

Jeanine will go down in history but she will be nothing more than a name. A person that they will study in faction history class as they discuss whether her brilliance was influenced by her lack of contact with other humans. She will never have a family, she will just be a name. The Matthews line ends with her. 

It’s probably for the best. There is no way that she can imagine herself as a mother. The only way that Jeanine would ever have a baby is if it was an accident and that’s clearly never going to happen. Sometimes she thinks that having a sibling that has children would be nice. It would be something and she wouldn’t have to work ridiculously hard to keep a small human alive when she is barely staying alive herself. 

She has to look out for herself above everyone else for once and so she can do this. She can make it through this Valentine’s Day and all the days to come. So what if people look at her weirdly? So what if that kind old lady sets her up with another man that she has to explain that there has been a big misunderstanding to? It doesn’t matter, she’ll be fine. It’s only one day.


End file.
